WASHINGTON (AP) – Advocates for Donald Trump defended him on Friday by accusing Democrats of waging a “hate” campaign against the former president and manipulating his words in the run-up to the deadly siege of the US Capitol. Their presentation included a blizzard of their own, selectively edited fiery comments from Democrats.
The Trump legal team characterized the case of accusation as a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ – a result of years of attempts to oust him from office – and they tried to reduce the case to Trump’s use of a single word, ‘fight’, ”In a speech before the riot on 6 January. They have played dozens of tracks showing the Democrats, some of whom are now senators serving as judges, and used the same word to incite supporters in speeches against Trump.
“You did nothing wrong” by using the word, Trump attorney David Schoen told senators. “But please stop the hypocrisy.”
The Trump defense team ignored that what Trump did to tell his supporters to fight like hell was to undermine a national election after each state verified its results, after the Electoral College confirmed it and after almost every election case by Trump and his allies has been rejected in court. Instead, they argued, he urged the crowd to support the primary challenges facing his opponents and to push for comprehensive electoral reform – something he was entitled to.
The case speeds to a conclusion and almost certainly acquittal, perhaps as soon as Saturday, with Trump’s lawyers making an abridged submission that used less than three of their 16 hours. The defense’s arguments and the quick pivot of the Democrats’ own words deviated from the core question of the trial – whether Trump incited the assault on the Capitol – and instead aimed to put accusation managers and Trump opponents in the defense.
After a two-day attempt by Democrats to reconcile Trump’s words with the ensuing violence, including through raw and emotional video footage, defense attorneys suggested that Democrats typically had the same overheated rhetoric as Trump.
But in an effort to pull off the equivalence, defenders have kept Trump’s monthly length to a minimum, attempts to undermine the election results and his call for followers to do the same. Democrats say the long campaign, rooted in a ‘big lie’, laid the groundwork for the mob that gathered outside the Capitol and stormed in. Five people were killed.
Without Trump, who in a speech during a protest that preceded the violence told supporters to fight like hell, the violence would never have happened, Democrats say.
“And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to strike and blow,” he said. Madeleine Dean, one of the indictment managers, said Thursday when she choked on emotion. “
When defense attorneys repeated their own videos over and over, Friday, some Democrats laughed and whispered to each other while almost all of their faces flashed on the screen. Some passed on notes. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut, apparently threw up his eyes amused when his face appeared. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar rolled her eyes. Most Republicans watched intently.
Some joked about the videos during a break and others said it was a distraction or a ‘false equivalence’ to Trump’s behavior.
“Well, we’ve heard the word ‘fight’ a lot,” said Angus King, a Maine senator, an independent who spoke to Democrats.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennett said it felt like the attorneys were “setting up straw men to take them down rather than deal with the facts.”
“Show me anytime it’s the result that one of our supporters took someone out of the crowd, and then we said, ‘This is great, good for you,'” said Chris Coons, a Delaware senator.
Trump’s defenders have told senators that Trump is entitled to contest the 2020 election results and that he does not amount to inciting violence. They tried to keep prosecutors off the table by comparing Democrats’ questioning of the legitimacy of Trump’s victory in 2016 to his challenge of his election loss. When Trump on January 6 appealed to supporters to fight like hell, he spoke figuratively.
“This is usually political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years,” said Michael van der Veen, another Trump attorney. “Countless politicians have spoken of the struggle for our principles.”
The defense team does not dispute the horrors of the violence, which were carefully reconstructed by indictments earlier this week, but said it was carried out by people who “hijacked” a peaceful event for their own purposes and who planned violence before Trump spoke has.
“You can not incite what is going to happen,” he said.
Acknowledging the reality of January Day is meant to dull the complex impact of the House Democrats’ case and quickly turn to what Trump’s defenders see as the core – and more lucrative – issue of the trial: whether Trump riots actually incited. The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be considered violent, but without convicting the president.
In anticipation of defense efforts to disrupt Trump’s rhetoric of the rioters’ actions, prosecutors have been trying for days to merge with a reconstruction of never-before-seen video footage along with excerpts from the president’s month-long request for his supporters to undo the election results.
With little hope of persuasion by the required two-thirds of the Senate, Democrats on Thursday delivered a graphic case in which they describe in stark, personal terms the terror they faced that day – some of it in the Senate hall where senators now sit jurors. They used a security video of rioters threateningly looking for House President Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, storming the building and waging bloody hand-to-hand fighting with police.
Although defense attorneys wanted the case to amount to a single speech, the Democrats showed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters well before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly attack on the Capitol when Congress won the Democrat Joe Biden confirmed. And they are using the rioters’ own videos and words from Jan. 6 to try to attach Trump’s responsibility. “We were invited here,” said one Capitol intruder. “Trump sent us,” another said. “He will be happy. We are fighting for Trump. ”
Prosecutors’ goal was not to incite Trump as a spectator, but rather as an “incentive” that spread the lies of the election. Then they encouraged supporters to come and challenge the results in Washington and fueled the dissatisfaction with rhetoric about the struggle and the recapture of the country.
The Democrats also demand that he not hold future federal office.
Trump’s attorneys say this goal only underscores the “hatred” Democrats feel for Trump. During the trial, they showed excerpts from Democrats who questioned the legitimacy of his presidency and had already suggested in 2017 that he be charged.
“Hate is at the heart of the housekeepers ‘fruitless efforts to blame Donald Trump for the rioters’ criminal acts – based on double hearsay statements by right – wing groups, based on no real evidence other than rank speculation,” Van der Veen said.
Trump’s lawyers noted that in the same speech on January 6, he urged the crowd to act “peacefully,” claiming that his remarks – and his general distrust of the election results – were protected under the First Amendment. Democrats strongly oppose the claim, saying his words were not political speech, but rather amounted to direct incitement to violence.